Is it possible for a link not to have an explicit href?

For example I get this as part of a third-party embed code

<a class="cs_import">Add from Address Book</a>

Not surprisingly "Add from Address Book" does not link to anything...but it is allegedly supposed to. How is this possible and if it is possible 开发者_如何学Cfor this to be a link..what could be the reason my link is broken?

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Yes. It is possible.

Why would someone do it?

1. Is is being used as a fragment anchor. This is not the case in your example because there is no name attribute. But if it had a name="myfragment" and the page file name was page.html, then page.html#fragment would automatically scroll the browser to that point on the page.

2. It is being used only for styling purposes. This could be a reason for doing it, but it is not a good reason, because styling can be accomplished either way.

3. It is being assigned an href attribute programmatically with javascript. For example, I could have a script that selects all the a tags with a specific class and assigns an href based on the text value, such as $("a.cs_import").attr("href",getHref(this.text()));, where getHref(innerText) is a javascript function that gets the URL from the description text. There is almost always a better way to do things than this, but there are some circumstances that warrant it.

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It's possible with JavaScript. One could, upon page load, run some JS code that looks for this element and adds an onClick handler to it.

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If the link is supposed to be "enhanced" with some javascript code, the third party probably gave you a javascript file to include as well. Be sure you're including that javascript file, and that you're doing it in the right place according to the vendor's instructions.

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href is just an attribute of the link tag. You can leave it out but it wouldn't be very semantic (might not even validate). I know that some browsers just show the element but doesn't allow you to click it.

In your case, maybe the link might be enhanced with JS later on. If it doesn't get enhanced, it's pretty much a glorfied span element.

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If an '<a>' element does not have a href attribute it is not focusable, and is not included in the tab order for keyboard access. href='#element' works by appending the hash to the current location, and '#' with no anchor identifier works like an id that is not found on the page, ususally by scrolling to the top of the page unless caught and handled.